God (Silent Hill)
God is the principal deity of the powerful resident cult known as The Order within the haunted northern American town of Silent Hill and the foremost antagonist and boss featured in the Silent Hill videogame series of. It is also the Order's main goal to birth their deity into this world and bring about the creation of paradise. They have succeeded in birthing God twice, but each time it has died at the hands of the game's protagonist. Despite this, it is unclear whether the being fought in the games is a real deity or a manifestation brought into being by the town's innate power and the Order's very own fanaticism. But it is heavily implied to have been responsible for the titular town's current state. Mythology The Order's mythology depicts God as a female being who descended to Earth sometime in the distant past and relieved humans of suffering. According to the myth, "God's strength ran out" and then she died. However, before dying, God promised that she would return to Earth if people remained faithful to her. Incarnation and Resurrection Alessa's Dream In the prequel Silent Hill: Origins, the Demon is probably God in a different form. Dahlia and Alessa In 1975, an Order priestess named Dahlia Gillespie discovered that her daughter Alessa possessed great psychic powers and decided to use her as a vessel to birth God. Dahlia's sect, The Order's Holy Woman Sect, believed that God would be born from fire, so she torched Alessa during the impregnation ritual, which was held in their home. The ritual succeeded in placing God within Alessa, but the birth was indefinitely delayed when Alessa split her soul in half with the help of Travis Grady, a passerby whom she was using as a conduit for her power. The half of her soul that Alessa split off was formed into a baby that was picked up and named Cheryl by Harry Mason and his wife. 7 years went by before Cheryl returned to Silent Hill. During that time, Alessa was kept alive in a basement room in Alchemilla Hospital by Dr. Michael Kaufmann, an associate of Dahlia's. While unable to be born, God thrived on the pain experienced by Alessa and grew stronger over time. Finally, in 1982, Harry and Cheryl returned to Silent Hill, and were separated after their car crashed. Cheryl rejoined with Alessa soon after, and she was returned to her full power. Harry, Alessa, Dahlia, and Kaufmann all became trapped in the Otherworld, a realm derived from Alessa's nightmares that was created by the power of God growing within her. Knowing that Dahlia would still try to bring God into the world, Alessa devised a plan to destroy, God, herself, and the Otherworld using the magical symbol called the Seal of Metatron. However, Dahlia manipulated Harry into sabotaging Alessa's plan and helping in her recapture. As a result God was successfully birthed into the world in the form of a glowing serene woman, based on Alessa's mental image of God's appearance. Just as Dahlia's plan came to fruition, Kaufmann arrived on the scene and shot her. He then threw a vial of Aglaophotis, a substance used to dispel evil spirits, at God, weakening it considerably. This caused it to mutate into a flying demonic form, based on Dahlia's image of God. This new form of God killed Dahlia with lightning and tried to kill Harry Mason as well, but Harry fought it off and managed to mortally wound the already weakened deity. In an act of self preservation, the God reverted to its human form, and created an infant girl that had the potential to birth God. Believing he was interacting with Alessa, Harry accepted the child, and escaped from Silent Hill with her as God finally died. Claudia and Heather 17 years later, the child, now named Heather, was living with Harry in town far from Silent Hill. Claudia Wolf, an Order priestess who sincerely wished to bring paradise to Earth by summoning God, tracked down Heather with the help of a detective named Douglas Cartland. Knowing that Alessa's pain nourished God, Claudia had Harry killed by one of her followers to fill Heather with hatred for her. Seeking revenge, Heather followed Claudia back to Silent Hill, eventually confronting her in the Order's main church. Instead of satisfying her thirst for vengeance, Heather swallowed an Aglaophotis pill that Harry had placed inside a pendant he had given her for her birthday. This caused Heather to vomit up that fetus that would become God. But before she could kill it, Claudia picked up the fetus and swallowed it, birthing God herself. This form of God resembled Claudia's childhood friend Alessa, whom she viewed as the world's savior. However, God was born improperly, and was once again very weak. This allowed Heather to kill the deity, and it has yet to be born again. Walter and Room 302 Walter Sullivan was an orphan raised at Wish House, an orphanage run by the Order as means of indoctrinating future members from the children. From a young age, Walter displayed great powers not unlike Alessa's, and he was chosen to summon God. The Order's Holy Mother Sect that ran Wish House, believed God would be birthed through a ceremony known as the 21 Sacraments, which required 21 sacrifices to birth God. When Walter was 24, in 1991, he began the ritual. However, instead of using a woman as the vessel for God, he used the ritual in an attempt to reunite with his mother using room 302, the apartment in Ashfield where he was born, as the vessel. Having been abused at Wish House as a child, Walter held a grudge against the Order, and used several of the priests as part of the 21 sacraments. Walter's attempt at the ritual continued after his ritual suicide, but his plans were stopped when Henry Townshend, current resident of room 302 and sacrament number 21, destroyed Walter's spirit. It is unknown what would have resulted if Walter had succeeded. Silent Hill Comics Samael in the Silent Hill comics is mostly likely God's true name or not and evidenced in God's Incubus form. Silent Hill: Revelation God while renamed "The God", was both the principal deity and major goal of the Order of Valtiel in Silent Hill: Revelation. Symbolism God is a manifestation of the Order's namesake deity. She is a powerful god that is much like the Incubus or Incubator, in which she spawns in a physical form determined by the birth mother's thoughts of how she should look. In this case, God resembles Alessa, as Claudia thought that God would resemble her, and held Alessa very close to her heart. Her monstrous aspect could be due to Heather's thoughts on how the god of such a twisted cult would look - this, combined with the fact that it was Heather's hate and anger that nurtured her in her utero, makes it likely that Heather's perception of the god could influence her eventual appearance, despite the fact that Heather does not birth her properly. As in the paintings of the God in the church, her status as a divine being is evidenced by the blood-red veil that hangs above her, and she is impervious as long as she is draped in it. It is unknown how God would have looked or behaved if Heather had properly given birth to her, and not Claudia. It is also speculated that God is, in fact, a morphed and brutally disfigured form of Claudia combined with the unborn fetus's power, much like the Incubator. If this is true, Claudia has literally become a vessel of God's power and Heather's beliefs could be just a misunderstanding of the actual situation. This also explains the absence of Claudia's corpse. The monster's legs are deformed and skeletal, which can suggest the pains and agony of birthing God in a vulgar way. God's nature as a benevolent deity is often called into question. God's behaviors and actions are often violent and inhumane, exemplified by Her interests in torturing lost souls and punishing those whom She feels require it. She appears to be much closer related to the common definition of a demon than a god. In Silent Hill 3, Heather even asks Father Vincent if God could be considered the Devil, to which he responds, "Whichever you like.". God seems to feed on suffering, as all of her rituals and birthing sacraments focus around both physical and mental agony. It often seems that God has little interest in preserving members of the Order unfortunate enough to be caught in the Otherworld, as members exhibit a fear of it and the mangled bodies of Order members are not an uncommon sight. God's intelligence may also be questioned, as all of her incarnations act no different from the other creatures that inhabit the Otherworld. Category:Video Game Devils Category:Female Devils Category:Evil Devils Category:God As The Devil Category:Devil God Category:Light Bringers